GREATEST MAN OF LETTERS AND THE LAST TRUE POLYMATH TO WALK THE EARTH

                                               

 

                                   

A master of poetry, drama, and the novel the German writer and scientist Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe spent 50 years on his two-part dramatic poem Faust, published in 1808 and 1832, also conducted scientific research in various fields, notably botany, and held several governmental positions.

George Eliot called him, "Germany's greatest man of letters... and the last true polymath to walk the earth".

 

People laud this magnum opus (Faust) as one of the peaks of world literature. Other well-known literary works include his numerous poems, Bildungsroman, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, and the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther.


His works span the fields of literature, theology, and humanism.

                                  

 

 

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (born August 28, 1749, Frankfurt am Main [Germany]—died March 22, 1832,(Age - 82 years) Weimar, Saxe-Weimar) German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theater director, critic, and amateur artist, considered the greatest German literary figure of the modern era.

 

He was sublimely brilliant in everything that he touched: poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theater director, critic.  A true Polymath Genius, his literary feats have a broader reach as deep a reach as Shakespeare.  Shakespeare's breadth was extended only to Plays and Sonnets.  Goethe revolutionized German Classicism.

 

Goethe had an estimated IQ of 205 - 215 accepting the limitations of this parameter. Geniuses have been 'categorized' as Genius (Moliere, Beethoven, Darwin), Great Genius (Kant, Spinoza, Newton), and Universal Genius. Goethe is considered to be a Universal Genius as were Leibniz, Pascal, and Da Vinci.

 

Goethe took great interest in the literature of England, France, Italy, Classical Greece, Persia, and Arabia and originated the concept of world literature.

 

Goethe is perhaps best known for The Sorrows of Young Werther  (1774) the first novel of the Sturm und Drang ("Storm and Stress") movement, and for Faust (Part-I,1808; Part-II,1832) a play about a man who sells his soul to the Devil that is sometimes considered Germany's greatest contribution to the world literature.

                                        

Goethe was great not only by the measure of what he accomplished in his own life but also by his strong and lasting influence on his contemporaries and successors. Though we remember him today chiefly for his great drama Faust -- which is in some quarters described as a near-perfect, complete commentary on the condition of modern man and has spawned derivative works too numerous to count across many media and genres -- Goethe was also a novelist, a poet, an attorney, a politician and statesman, and a published, highly regarded scientist. He was also a talented artist; about 3,000 of his drawings and sketches survive. An enthusiastic writer of letters, his collected correspondence numbers some 10,000 pieces.

 

Goethe is the only German literary figure whose range and international standing equal those of Germany’s supreme philosophers (who have often drawn on his works and ideas) and composers (who have often set his works to music). From a European perspective, he appears as the central and unsurpassed representative of the Romantic movement, broadly understood. He could be said to stand in the same relation to the culture of the era that began with the Enlightenment and continues to the present day as William Shakespeare does to the culture of the Renaissance and Dante to the culture of the High Middle Ages. His Faust, though eminently stage-worthy when suitably edited, is also Europe’s greatest long poem since John Milton’s Paradise Lost, if not since Dante’s The Divine Comedy.

 

 A brief summary of 'Faust' :

 

Goethe’s Faust reworks the late medieval myth of a brilliant scholar so disillusioned he resolves to make a contract with the devil Mephistopheles. The devil will do all he asks on Earth and seeks to grant him a moment in life so glorious that he will wish it to last forever. But if Faust does bid the moment stay, he falls to Mephistopheles and must serve him after death. In this first part of Goethe’s great work, the embittered thinker and Mephistopheles enter into their agreement, and soon Faust is living a rejuvenated life and winning the love of the beautiful Gretchen. But in this compelling tragedy of arrogance, unfulfilled desire, and self-delusion, Faust heads inexorably toward an infernal destruction.

 

 

 

 

Doctor Faust is an accomplished man. We admire him, ask him for advice, and rush to his lessons. But now, Faust cannot take pleasure in the transmission or flatter himself with the admiration he provokes. He wants to go towards the whole, frequent the world of spirits, the worlds of heaven, to know "the axiom of the sage." The world of men is a limit that he cannot tolerate. So Goethe's Faust, alchemist, theologian, and scientist, decides to do spiritualism sessions and achieve higher revelation.

 

 

 

Faust was an intelligent young scholar who sought to know as much as possible about general world knowledge like science and religion. One night after going for a walk he was approached by the devil, going by the name Mephistopheles. The Devil offered Faust a deal: to sign away his soul and be given all knowledge of the world.

 

 

The Devil will try to offer him all the temptations that humanity can offer.

 

 

Faust signs a contract with his own blood and the story takes off. Eventually Faust develops a lust for a young innocent and beautiful woman, Gretchen, and he goes to great lengths to seduce and have her.

                                          

 

 

 

How absolute a hero, Faust is also a romantic hero. The mirror scene is also a sacred beauty. Faust (the work) is a Gothic novel: a pact, fantastic figures (witches, fairies), and a significant outcome.

 

 

 

The concept of the devil, witchcraft, selling one's soul, and the downward spiral that follows such an ordeal has always intrigued the readers.

 

 

 

The Influence spread across Europe, and for the next century, his works inspired much, music, drama, poetry, and philosophy. Many people consider Goethe the most important writer of the German language and one of the most important thinkers in Western culture as well. Early in his career, however, he wondered about painting, perhaps his true vocation; late in his life, he expressed his expectation that people would ultimately remember his work in optics.

 

 

 

The original Goethe–Schiller Monument is in Weimar, Germany. It incorporates Ernst Rietschel's 1857 bronze double statue of Johann Wolfgang Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, who are probably the two most revered figures in German literature. 

 

  

                                   

 

 

In the literary culture of the German-speaking countries, Goethe has had so dominant a position that, since the end of the 18th century, his writings have been classified as "classical".